Floor Statements

I appreciate my good friend from Colorado yielding me this time.

Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Last year, 58 percent of the college graduates in this country were women. Right now in this country, over 50 percent of the individuals that have college degrees are women, and last year in corporate America, 53 percent of new hires for positions that required a college degree were given to women. This reflects broad, gender-based parity with respect to universities and with respect to entry-level positions in corporate America.

However, Mr. Speaker, when we look at what's going on with respect to advancement--in other words, women's ability to climb or ascend the corporate ladder--we see a very different story emerging. Even though 50 percent of the workers with college degrees in corporate America are women, when it came to promotions for managers, only 37 percent of those went to women. When it came to promotions for vice presidents, only 25 percent went to women. And when it came to promotions towards the executive committee level or the C-suite, if you will, only 15 percent went to women. This reflects a significant talent drain that occurs with respect to women as they advance in corporate America.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very significant problem for this country and for every American. It's a problem if you care about our economy. To have a productive and growth-oriented economy, we need diversity, diversity of ideas, and we cannot have that unless women are represented in policymaking decisions of corporations.

This is a problem, Mr. Speaker, if we care about competitiveness because we cannot have a competitive economy if we make decisions based on gender and not based on merit.

This is a problem, Mr. Speaker, if you care about working families. More than 50 percent of the breadwinners in this country are women. If they don't have the same access that men do, it not only affects them, but it affects their children.

Mr. Speaker, this is a problem if we care about women, if we care about young women in particular and our daughters. And as a father of four daughters, I care very deeply about making sure my daughters have a view that they have equality of opportunity regardless of whatever career they choose.

We have to change the mindset of institutions, the mindset of individuals, and this legislation helps do that.

Mr. Speaker, last year almost 58 percent of college graduates were women, and women now account for over half of the college-educated population. In corporate America, women were 53 percent of new

hires last year, and women account for 50 percent of jobs held by college-educated individuals. This is all very good news.

Yet, when you look at advancement, we see another story emerging. It is estimated that when people are promoted to managers in corporations, only 37 percent of them are women. When promotions to vice presidents are made, only 26 percent are women.

This is a talent drain. This is not only a big problem for women, but it's a big problem for our economy. It limits diversity of ideas, which limits productivity.

The gender gap hurts U.S. competitiveness by creating management structures that don't reflect the views of 50 percent of the population. It hurts families because women are economic anchors in the majority of families.

Fifty-three percent of working women are primary breadwinners, and 15 million households are headed by women. We're creating an economic burden. The gender gap and wage gap is not reflective of the kind of society we want to live in. We need to reverse both institutional and individual mindsets that limit the progress of women.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my friend and colleague from New York for yielding me this time. And I also want to thank my friend and colleague from Texas for his leadership on the committee.

Too often, Mr. Chairman, we talk about our budget in absolute terms, and we don't talk to the American people about what budgets really are, which are choices. As we go through each line item of revenues and each line item of spending, we tend to characterize these things in very dramatic terms, as if any change, up or down, on any line of revenue or any line of spending, would have catastrophic implications.

We don't have an honest dialogue with the American people about what budgets really are, which are choices and statements of priorities, which is why, in my opinion, this Congress, and the administration, have failed to recognize the two dominant themes facing our country and our world right now.

The first is the fundamental need to change the fiscal trajectory of this country across the long term, and the second is the need to invest in our future and our children to prepare them for a world that is fundamentally changed because of globalization and technology.

We cannot do these two things--we cannot change the fiscal trajectory of this country and we cannot make investments in our future and our children--unless we do two things: first, reform the entitlement programs in this country; and, second, take actions to raise revenues.

Last year, 13 percent of the American population was over 65. In 2030, 20 percent of the American population will be over 65. This singular fact dominates our whole discussion around our fiscal future.

Just to put this into perspective, if we don't change the trajectory of our entitlement programs, in 10 years they will consume 70 percent of our spending and literally crowd out every other priority we have as a country. And just to put this in a sharper focus, right now, as a country, if you add up all the spending at the Federal, State, and local level on Americans over 65, that number is $27,000 a year. If you do the same math on Americans under 18, that number is $11,000 a year. That is a 2\1/2\ to 1 ratio of statements of priorities that we are making in our budget.

Just to be clear, I don't come here thinking we should spend less on the elderly. I don't come here thinking that we should be cutting taxes. I actually think we should be raising taxes. But we fundamentally have to change the trajectory of entitlement spending in this country if we want to invest in our future.

Prior to coming to Congress, I spent two decades in the private sector. I started and led two companies that became New York Stock Exchange listed companies and, in the process, created several thousand jobs. That experience taught me two important lessons: first, we have to look at the facts, always; and, second, we have to think about the future, and we have to plan for the future.

I have already talked about the facts. Now I want to talk a little bit about the future.

If we want to create good jobs and reverse some of the trends that the gentleman from Texas just talked about and demonstrated to us, we have to make investments in making this country more competitive. That is the fundamental issue facing our country right now, Mr. Chairman, is to make this country more competitive.

To do that we have to do several things:

First, we have to continue to invest and reform our educational system. There has never been a stronger correlation in our country's history between having a good education and getting a job.

Second, we need a national energy policy to ensure that we have clean and inexpensive energy across the long-term. If you look at the history of successful economies, the two most important numbers are the cost of money and the cost of energy.

Third, we have to reform our immigration system.

Fourth, we have to invest in our infrastructure.

To do these things requires investments. We will fundamentally not be able to make these investments unless we, as I said, reform our entitlement programs and raise revenues.

We are confronted with two choices in our budgets, and these are insufficient choices. The American people deserve better. On one hand, we have a choice where we don't recognize the reality of where the entitlement programs are going, and the other choice is we slash and cut the critical investments we need to make to have a future. We can do better.

Each party likes to take the high ground on a balanced approach, but what does that really mean? To me, a balanced approach means several things.

First, we need additional revenues through measures like the Buffett rule, by closing certain corporate tax loopholes while also lowering corporate tax rates. The Buffett rule levels the playing field, does not raise rates, but it makes sure that there is parity in terms of taxes that are paid; and it will do a significant amount towards closing the income inequality gap in this country, and it will produce more revenues. That is the first thing we have to do.

The second thing, we do need to reform on entitlement programs, and we should do four things. We should means test; we should raise the cap; we should change how the cost of living adjustment is calculated; and we should change the retirement age, not for people who do manual labor, but for everyone else. That is the second thing we need to do.

The third thing we need to do is we need to look at our discretionary spending and our defense spending, and we need to make these expressions of our priorities around our future. Some of that will require additions; some of that will require subtractions.

These are things we need to do to have a balanced approach. This is the choice that this Congress should have, an approach that invests in our future and changes the fundamental trajectory of our entitlement programs while taking care of those most vulnerable. That, to me, is a balanced approach.

I am proud to be a Democrat. I am proud to be a Democrat because of our historical fight for those left behind and because of our view that we have to invest in our future. I would like my party to lead on fundamental reform to these entitlement programs, and do it now, so we don't have to affect current beneficiaries or people who are close to being beneficiaries. I want to take those savings with additional tax revenues and invest it in our future, invest it in our children, invest it in making this country more competitive so that we can create jobs that have a good standard of living.

I do.

That's right. I appreciate my friend from California for providing me with this opportunity to talk about what I think is important for our economy, to get our economy going to create jobs.

We spend a lot of time, both in this Congress and in Washington generally, talking about the economic challenges that this country faces and about the employment challenges this country faces, and those conversations often evolve into conversations about our tax policy and about the size of our government--two very important things for us to be spending time on as we talk about the fiscal trajectory of the country.

They are two things that actually have very little to do with what is important for creating jobs in this country, because what has really caused the employment challenges that we face today, what has really caused the economic challenges that this country faces are two things: globalization and technology. They are two trends that are gripping our society and really started about 20 or 25 years ago, and these trends are accelerating.

Many people have been benefited by these trends. Americans with great education have been blessed by these trends. Americans with access to capital have benefited because of these trends. And hundreds of millions of citizens around the world have benefited from these trends because they move from formerly not being in a modern economy to being in a modern economy.

The problem is that the average American has been negatively affected by these trends. It happened too quickly. We weren't quite prepared for it. We didn't invest in our future the way we need to to prepare a broader number of Americans for a world that is fundamentally changed because of these trends.

To me, this is the central issue we face as a country if we want to reverse the employment trends. By the employment trends, I don't just mean the headline unemployment number, which is tragic. I mean what happens if you look behind those numbers, if you look at the standard of living of the average American, which has consistently gone down now for two decades.

In order to reverse these trends, in order to take these trends-- globalization and technology--and bend them to benefit a broader number of Americans, we fundamentally have to do things here in our country that involve investment.

We have to improve our educational system and invest in education. There has never been a stronger correlation in the history of this country between having a good education and one's ability to get a job.

We need a national energy policy that can lead us to the advanced energy economy which will be cleaner and more efficient and more economical. If you look back over the history of modern economies, the two most important numbers for an economy to be successful is the cost of money and the cost of energy. We have an opportunity if we lead in advanced energy to keep the cost of energy down.

We need to reform our immigration system. Half of the Fortune 500 companies in this country were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Immigrants fundamentally create jobs in this country.

And we need to invest in our infrastructure. We need to build a modern infrastructure for the future: transportation, communication, energy, educational facilities, all of the things that we need to do to be competitive. This will create jobs in the short term, and it will lay the groundwork for a more competitive America across the long term.

These are the things that we need to do to make our country more competitive so that we can create and attract and sustain jobs that have a high standard of living. That's the sacred trust we've been given as Members of Congress. And to do these things and to make the investments that are important in energy and education and infrastructure and in our immigration system, we need to be in a position fiscally to make investments, and that's a role of government that I strongly believe in.

To do that, we do have to change our fiscal trajectory, but we have to be honest about the drivers of our fiscal condition. We have to acknowledge that we do need comprehensive entitlement reform in this country so that our important entitlement programs don't crowd out all the other priorities we have in the Nation. And we also have to acknowledge that we need to reform our tax system, implement proposals like the Buffett rule that level the playing field and create more revenues. Our revenue as a percentage of our economy has never been lower.

If we do these two things, we create an opportunity for us to invest in our future. We create an opportunity to do the things that we need to do to make this country more competitive.

As someone who was the son of a union electrician, whose parents never went to college, who had the blessing of a good education and started two businesses from scratch that both became New York Stock Exchange companies and created thousands of jobs, I have an appreciation of what's important in terms of entrepreneurship in this country. These are the things that we need to do if we want to make a difference, and these are the things that I

care about as we try to work against these important trends.

I think you made a very good point about the amount of cash in our private sector. There is more cash in U.S. corporations than there's ever been, and there's more cash in our banks than there's ever been.

I believe the private sector creates the jobs, but there is a clear and distinct role for government to level the playing field and make the investments that are needed for the private sector to thrive. The energy industry is a terrific example of that. If we had a national energy policy that pointed us in a common direction where we could say this is where we want our energy production and utilization to be in the future, it would benefit Americans so much in the short term because of the quality of their life in terms of making us more competitive.

If you look back over the history of this country, it takes us about 50 years to change energy sources. It took about 50 years to go from wood to coal; it took about 50 years to go from coal to oil and natural gas; and it will take about 50 years to truly have this advanced, clean, efficient energy economy that we know we should have as a country. We should have policies in place that encourage that. And natural gas can be a fabulous bridge to that future.

There has to be accountability. We need to ensure that it is done in an environmentally sensitive way. I believe there is a role for the Federal Government to do that, and we should be embracing it because it can clearly bridge us in a cleaner way and in a cost-effective and competitive way to the future we all imagine for clean and advanced energy.

It will take time to get there. It is a massive investment to transform our energy infrastructure, and we can do that, which, by the way, will create a lot of jobs while we do it, but we can get there. And natural gas can be a terrific bridge.

I absolutely agree with you.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, the sequester is bad way to deal with deficit reduction and will likely have a negative effect on our economy, particularly Maryland's economy, which I have been saying for years is unusually vulnerable to reductions in government spending. We are faced with the sequester because our government has failed to act in a bi-partisan way for the good of the country. The cost of doing nothing is not nothing. Because we failed to take the necessary steps to deal with our deficit in a balanced way--and because special interests were uncompromising in the face of any proposals that affected them--we find ourselves facing a mini-doomsday machine in the sequester.

Unless Congress acts, sequestration would have a serious and disproportionate impact on job creation and economic growth in Maryland. The 60 non-military federal facilities and 17 military facilities in Maryland would see their ability to conduct operations significantly erode; nearly 140,000 federal civilian employees who work in Maryland would face furloughs and potential pay cuts; and thousands of jobs in Maryland would be put at risk. Our students, small businesses, families, and first-responders would also be affected by devastating cuts to investments in education, law enforcement, infrastructure, innovation, research, and other areas that are critical to building a strong middle class.

Our focus should be on avoiding the sequester and passing a grand budget deal along the lines of Simpson-Bowles that reduces the deficit in a balanced way. We should do our job, which is to come together, negotiate in good faith, and find a solution.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the Frederick High School Band, an organization in my district celebrating its 100th Anniversary on April 27, 2013.

Since its founding at Frederick County's Boys High School in 1913, the Frederick High School Band has served as an organization where our community's young adults can grow personally and academically. The band's members have acted as role models for their peers, and they should be proud of their musical accomplishments.

I ask that you and my other distinguished colleagues help me in honoring the significant occasion of the Frederick High School Band's 100th Anniversary. The band is a model organization and will remain an inspiration in our community for many generations to come.

In my judgment, Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles are American heroes because they were given a job by the President of the United States. It was a very difficult job, and the assignment required significant vision. Their job was to work in a bipartisan way with experts and come up with a proposal that was in the best interest of the common good of American citizens.

That's exactly what they did. The fact that it was rejected by our government, in my judgment, is a tragedy. If you contrast what they did to what we're considering here today with H.R. 444, it puts into context exactly the problems we have with this Congress. Because what Mr. Simpson and Mr. Bowles did is they came up with a specific proposal that had additional revenues and had important cuts to put the country on a better fiscal trajectory.

We're not here debating what proposal we should put in place to put this country on a better fiscal trajectory. That would be a worthy discussion. Nor are we talking about the things we need to do as a country to make our country more competitive, to create jobs. We're not talking about immigration reform. We're not talking about a national energy policy. We're not talking about investing in our infrastructure. What we're talking about is a gimmick that has nothing to do with the substance of the fiscal debate that we need to have in this country.

This proposal, this bill is a gimmick for career politicians in their game of chess. It has nothing to do with the substance of what the American people need us to do as a Congress. We need to adopt the framework that was put forth by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, where people actually did their job, and we need to use that as a framing document to deal with our fiscal trajectory. We then need to get on with the business of making this country more competitive so we can create jobs that have a good standard of living. To do that, we need to change important policies in this country around immigration, energy, infrastructure, and education. That's what the business of this Congress should be.

There's more cash in U.S. corporations than there's ever been in our country's history. Corporations have three things they can do with their cash: They can raise their dividends; they can buy back stock; or they can make investments.

To make investments, which require a long-term time horizon, there needs to be certainty. If we care about American families, if we want our corporations to make investments that will create jobs, we will have certainty on the debt ceiling for a reasonable period of time and we will create fiscal certainty in this country in a balanced way. By ``balanced,'' I mean additional revenues. That's what will create certainty in this country. That's what will get U.S. corporations investing.

If U.S. corporations invest, we create jobs, and that helps working families.

Section 4:

``Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

``Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within . . . ''